Post Twenty: Oh Really?

I think this is mildly funny. We have on our orders a cotton wool from S & M products. When I think of cotton wool, I don't necessarily think of S & M.

This is all.

Peace. x

Post Nineteen: The New Girl

My little world of solitude has shifted, the days of loneliness and introspection altered. We hired a new girl!

New people come and go, but much is different in this case. The new girl is cheery, sarcastic and just the right amount of nerdy and it seems we have a lot in common. The fact that we like funny shit and science and have similar degrees and we also have lame uncool soft spots for Disney films isn't that mind blowing, but to have someone else the same age as me trying to forge a career in the funeral industry is pretty unexpected.

At first I felt like a first born child when a new baby is born. Most of the staff I work with have children the same age as me so I do sometimes seek advice from them as I would a parent or older sibling. Similarly, we have a family atmosphere in our funeral home so it's easy to see where the lines were blurry for me. I was the little girl in the hood that baked the cakes and messed around with practical jokes and I didn't want that role taken off of me. I was nice, but I felt uneasy.

Today they let me bring the new girl into the mortuary and for eight hours I proceeded with my usual practise to see how she fared. All the suturing, urine and nakedness she could handle. Not only was she fine with it all, but she explained how she felt about it all in a way that I too felt.

"It is what it is, nothing more exciting and nothing less" she said. A very Dalai Lama-ish response.

With compassion but without sissy drama she helped me wash and dress the people and she watched diligently as I prepared and set the facial features. At the end of the day I offered a debrief but she really didn't need it. It was really weird actually talking to someone all day, and explaining why I do the little tricks that I do but have never actually verbalised.

Getting home and reflecting on the day, I've decided I like having a new friend at work. She won't be in the mortuary most of the time, but having someone just like me around might come in handy on days where I need to share the smell, or scoff a heap of junk food because I've been staring at someones gunshot wound for too long. So to you new girl, let's be friends!

Peace. x

Blog Eighteen: Til' Death Do Us Part.

Is this weird? This is weird. One shirt to rule them all.

The tag pictured above was on a shirt that I had to dress a dead person in....I think that the dude was trying to get my attention from the other side. Ooooooooooooooooooooooo! The O is missing, but no big deal. (I wasn't made in China though...but imagine if I was!)

This whole coincidence has made me feel more connected to the poor guy. Death brought us together. It seems that anything around me can inspire introspection these days! Blimey. A random train of thought, but I wonder if his death brought him closer to the people around him? Who was by his side? I mean, I was there after, but who was there during?

Who's going to be around me when I go?

I think I like that I don't know yet. I mean, I can vaguely speculate, but with no certainty can I even consider that anyone in my life now will be there in the end. I like the mystery, and it quite fondly causes me to reminisce about the time before I knew that Santa and the Easter bunny was all a lie, a horible filthy lie. The period of blissful naivity before the truth hit, before I knew that the world was littered with rapists and famine and foul tasting wheatgrass shots.

I'm 25 years old. I think this age traditionally calls for the beginnings of maturity. The playing field of lovers uniting. Damn whiney babies, predictable nuptuals and the like. I was thinking about marriage today, and I just don't know how I feel about the whole package deal. I love that you could have a companion that knows you better than you know yourself, because I'm always forgetting shit. I like that you can probably get away with looking feral and they can't easily leave you...sure, they might cheat, but cheating could bring all the needed spice back into a marriage right?

The whole til death do us part thing, that's probably the strangest thing that marriage has got going for it. You're saying when you make those vows "If I'm around, I'll be holding back your hair (if you have any) when you cough up your lungs...and when you slip away my hand will be in yours."

I want that. I don't want to go alone. I don't care if I choose someone to wade through the sewers of life with me in 2, 5,10,20 or 60 years time, but yes, I want someone there. Maybe thats all I can concretely say I would want out of a committed marriage. So to my future husband/wife/ turkey basting partner....hello out there! I wonder if I know you yet?

Peace.

Post Seventeen: Hair Schmare. The Shit Blows.

In the last six months I've become increasingly unconcerned with my outward appearance. You can probably tell this by the fact that I've above posted a particularly feral photo of myself with no makeup and crazy unbrushed, unwashed hair that I just took of myself about a minute ago....the black hair is indeed me in this very hour.

It may seem that I'm all hooked up on how I look because I have had a gazillion hair colour changes, but I've had people asking me why I change it so much as if I am going through some sort of existential crisis. Their very interest in something I deem so completely unsignificant spurs me on. In fact, they just tutt-tutt at me now, shaking their heads as they mutter something about recklessness and complete ruin. I follow with saying that I'll shave it off if I want and many gasp. Seriously, it's hair. Just outgrowths of keratin containing junk that grows from many many many follicles in the dermis and we have heaps and heaps and heaps of the stuff all over our bodies.

This interest got me wondering why people are so attached to the hair on their heads. Perhaps its indicative of health, and maybe it's so hard wired in our systems that no hair = sick, and that is why people flip out if you chop it all off. It's probably heavily schematically linked with feminity too, and people might assume that I am a hard core dyke if I decide that a 'Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta' hair-do is a look I might want to try out.

This isn't really why I started this post though. I went to work this week with hair freshly dyed black, and the strange thing is that after all the hysteria over the last six months of changes no one mentioned ANYTHING. De nada. Niente. (I have no idea if these foreign words actually do mean nothing....)

Not one "oh, you look different for some reason" or "Sarah, the black is better/worse/any different to the gingerness on your head you had yesterday."

I work with a lot of people. A large percentage can't talk because they're dead, but they didn't know me before meeting them that day anyway so they don't count. But maybe, say, over 10 people didn't even look twice. I'm not a sensitive lady so I really don't care, but I do find it a very strange social behaviour. A strange behaviour indeed. The saga continues, but the black is probably here to stay. Once you go black....

Peace.

Post Sixteen: Please Annunciate.

Happy transfer-weekend-anniversary blog!

The last time I was on call was the intensely sleep-deprived, mocha fuelled inspiration for Post One! Hoorah for blog times!........ (I just got a prank call. Spooky.)

I had a moment last night.

I was passenger in our transfer van at about 11PM, and I had been working non stop since 7.30Am. All I had eaten was a piece of peanut butter toast (may I just say that Black and Gold brand peanut butter is INCREDIBLE...don't let the hideously underwhelming exterior fool you into thinking it's substandard!). We had just taken a sweet little lady into our care and was on our way back to ops, me with her dentures in my lap, floating in a tupperware container filled with syrup of days old water/saliva juice, and I found myself acutely aware of an odd aural-emotional experience. I just made that up. Aural-Emotional. Yeah, I'm awesome.

The noise the teeth were making sloshing in that little bucket, combined with the drawling American accent of the Christian radio announcer who was delivering insane and totally fucking ludicrous teachings about the twilight series that my partner, the driver, was listening to... These sounds intermingling with the steady hum of the engine, the sporadic passing of traffic and the blow of the air conditioning inside the vehicle. Sure, I was tired and hungry and I still am, but I enjoyed the introspection in that moment.

I then thought of what my friends would be doing and how much I wanted to be out to play, but then thought of the dead lady I just helped and the one still alive that I had left behind weeping at the loss of her best friend of over 60 years. I had given her a hug, a flower and my number, and said goodbye. I then thought about what she would be doing in the next half hour. I had made the bed that the lady had died in, but there was still the former occupants body imprint in the mattress and the pillow was still warm. Would the friend notice the absence in the room, and would she have an introspective moment of her own?

Anyway, this partner of mine for the weekend, let's call him 'Kell'. Kell is quite typically what you'd imagine a funeral director to be like. He's over 55, his grey hair dyed jet black as to preserve his dignity. Very respectful, polite and empathetic, although mostly silent and ominous. When he walks, he moves with a hunched back and a slow, long gait. He is always lovely to talk to, that is, when he can hear you and when you in turn can hear him back. Kell is what Jerry Seinfeld would denounce a low talker. The lowest of low talkers. It drives me insane.

Kell: mmmfff broba smhenha brennha

Sarah: What's that Kell? I didn't quite catch that. Again.

Kell: after 3 minutes of pondering. Mmmmdhufb hishfsud. And then I said.... msuhfus ashufldf.

Sarah: oh. yeah. awesome.

What is really annoying is that I'm on call from Friday 4PM, all the way through until Sunday 4PM. Sometimes I'm out for a couple of hours across the whole weekend, others I'm out non-stop. The district I cover roughly encompasses from Caboolture to the border of Tanah Merah/ far south south side and out to Wynum and Wellington Point. Long drives to Redcliffe, then to Sunnybank, then back to Sandgate and beyond...this amount of low talking conversation can and does send me a little loopy.

Enough said. I need a nanna nap and long for a cuddle.

Peace. X

Post Fifteen: The Best Catalogue in the World.

Look at these guys! Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

We order our mortuary supplies from a company called Hickeys. Not only does the name of the company make me giggle and think about high school, but I imagine a shed full of Americans in the deep south chewing tobacco and wearing plaid...and they have names like Darlene and Ol' Bill. Why would a bunch of hicks sell embalming chemicals?

The company seems effective enough, but one thing that is outstanding is the new catalogue they just sent me. The pictures say it all. I had to share this.

And that top picture, I'm pretty sure they hired Neve Campbell. Sexy eyes and a facial mask is incredibly alluring.

Peace.

Post Fourteen: Who's a Pretty Bird.

I'm pretty chuffed with myself today. I've actually turned what is essentially a horrible, dank, stinky room into a ridiculously colourful and cute mortuary wonderland. Uh huh!

I've been thinking a lot about the children we get in from time to time, and it always makes me a little gloomy. Babies and Kids shouldn't die. I figure that the least I can do is make the place they come to nice so that if their little casper spirit is floating around they aren't so totally freaked out. Besides, I have to spend 8 hours a day there too...

I've made a paper crane for each of the babies and kids we've had come through over the past year and a bit...their name and funeral date is written inside in pencil and it hangs as a little reminder or legacy I guess. Not in a creepy way.... Maybe in my mind it's just a gift from me to them.

Sad face. (But the cranes look so rad, and when you blow them with a hair dryer they fly!)

Peace.

P.S. This stupid blogger won't let me put spaces in between my paragraphs. It's driving me NUTS. Sorry. I like my spaces.